Wednesday, October 27, 2010

The education debate that Robinson has delivered here, and in various other talks that I have previewed, stresses the fact that there is a dire need for educational reform, not just in the United States, but all over the world. We have to ask, what is education for? Who is it for? What is important and what can be thrown out?While mathematics and language are always at the top tier and are of the utmost importance, they can be taught throughout every aspect of education, including art, music, dance and the rest of the arts. Educators must become creative enough to see this connection if we are going to be able to keep our children interested in school, interested in their future, interested in creating a life for themselves where their professional passion takes over and their work seems less a stress as it is a work of pleasure.Creativity itself plays a significant part in our journey from youth to adulthood. We are born with a beautiful knack for happiness and play, but are asked to throw that out the window for an industrialized education product, through testing that supposedly proves how "smart" we are. Education without creativity, helps the student loose the sense of their own specific talents and helps them to become frustrated with the world around them, lashing out in forms of frustration that include cyber-bullying, because they have been forced to place their divine purpose on the back-burner and made to regurgitate facts and figures without any real life application.The education debate over the loss of creativity makes me think of people in history such as Christopher Columbus, the Wright brothers, Albert Einstein, Richard Wagner, Abraham Lincoln, Issac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Tesla and Westinghouse. These were all people who made great strides toward a better way of living, but were also laughed at by the creative use of their ideas, or were ridiculed for being different. FDR brought our country out of The Great Depression through an understanding that the arts needed to be supported and cultivated and charter schools that embrace the arts are producing children with higher test scores. Is it just coincidence? I think not.